As one of the leading companies in the broadband powerline networking industry (and the wired communications industry in general), at DS2 we recognized early on that we had an important role to play in driving the development of Industry Standards to ensure that consumers, equipment manufacturers and service providers could benefit from fully-interoperable networking products.
Interoperability ensures that products from different vendors work well together, which creates healthy competition in the marketplace, accelerates technical innovation and ensures that our customers get the best products at the best possible price. Unfortunately, the broadband powerline industry has gone through a period of several years in which multiple incompatible technologies competed for the same market, creating customer confusion and slowing down adoption of powerline technology.
Incompatible PHY/MAC specifications, coupled with different views about how "in-home powerline networks" and "broadband powerline access networks" should coexist led to the creation of multiple industry alliances, that each promoted a different specifications.
UPA
In January 2005, DS2 and other companies who shared a similar vision of the powerline industry founded the Universal Powerline Association (UPA). The goals of UPA are a reflection of our joint vision of what the broadband powerline industry needed: a unified technology that would work well for both "in-home networking" and "broadband access" applications, where multiple services could co-exist when sharing the same power lines, and which would provide excellent performance for video, audio and data networking applications.
UPA has been key to the development of the powerline industry: UPA-compatible products have been the first to provide transmission speeds up to 200 Mbps (which has become the industry standard since then) and they are today the most popular 200 Mbps powerline option for many consumer electronics companies, telecommunication service providers and utilities around the world. UPA-compliant powerline products power services such as British Telecom's "BT Vision" IPTV Service, Telefonica's "Imagenio" IPTV service or Portugal Telecom's "Meo" IPTV Service. UPA-compliant powerline networking products can be found in consumer retail stores worldwide, manufactured by well-know brands such as NETGEAR, D-LINK or Buffalo; while UPA-compliant technology is embedded in HD media players such as Conceptronic's MediaGiantPro or advanced residential gateways such as Corinex's ADSL2+ AV200 Powerline Gateway.
Leading manufacturers of BPL Access equipment such as Corinex, Ambient or IBEC are using UPA technology to help utilities across the world to provide broadband services and Smartgrid applications over existing low-voltage and medium-voltage power lines. UPA's collaboration with the Open PLC European Research Alliance (OPERA) has also promoted the adoption of the most advanced technology for the Broadband Powerline Access market.
No other powerline industry association today has the diverse mix of members (Broadband Access vendors, CPE equipment vendors, silicon vendors or CE vendors) that UPA has, which is a reflection of UPA's view that powerline technology must be a universal technology for multiple markets.
DS2's UPA-compliant products, such as our award-winning Aitana and Montgo chipsets, today provide the best combination of performance and features available in the powerline networking industry.
ITU-T G.hn
Interoperability is one of the most important factors to bring an industry to a level of maturity in which hundreds of millions of devices can be shipped each year. The situation in the powerline industry from 2005 to 2008, with three incompatible specifications, is not the fastest way to reach that level of maturity. Having three incompatible technical approaches for the same problem confuses customers; the uncertainty of which technology will eventually "win" in the market place has a net effect of delaying purchases and investments. Although UPA's advanced technology has allowed UPA members to ship millions of devices to a variety of markets, the powerline industry needs a truly unified standard in order to move to the next level.
Realizing that a different approach was required, a number of companies started an effort inside ITU-T to create a unified G.hn networking standard that would bring three key advantages:
- G.hn would unify the powerline networking industry and would solve the powerline interoperability problem
- G.hn would unify the powerline, phoneline and coaxial networking industries, to create a single market that would drive volume to the same level that the Wi-Fi/802.11 industry enjoys today.
- G.hn would be a next generation standard that would bring performance levels significantly higher than what is available today.
On Dec 12th 2008, ITU-T announced the adoption of the G.hn standard (now officially called G.9960) as the first (and only) international standard for networking over powerlines, phonelines and coaxial cable. Immediately, several silicon vendors (including DS2) announced support for G.hn/G.9960. This milestone was received with excitement by analysts from all research firms covering the wired networking industry, including ABI Research, iSuppli, In-stat, Parks Associates and many others.
The fact that ITU-T G.hn's single-PHY/MAC architecture ensures full multi-vendor interoperability, and the fact that the same standard can operate over multiple wires (power lines, phone lines and coaxial cable) will make G.hn the dominant standard for the wired home-networking industry. Silicon vendors will be able to design one single chip and sell it in many different (and previously fragmented) markets. Equipment manufacturers will be able to design one single type of box with multiple connectors, and users and service providers will be able to install them wherever they want. Consumer Electronics manufacturers can offer TVs and Set-Top-Boxes that can communicate with each other automatically over any kind of home wiring.
HomeGrid Forum (of which DS2 is a founding member) is a global, non-profit trade group promoting the International Telecommunication Union’s G.hn standardization efforts for next-generation home networking. HomeGrid Forum promotes adoption of G.hn through technical and marketing efforts, addresses certification and interoperability of G.hn-compliant products, and cooperates with complementary industry alliances. HomeGrid Forum members include Intel, Infineon, Panasonic, Texas Instruments, Best Buy, Ikanos Communications, Aware, DS2, Gigle, Pulse~Link, ACN, Sigma Designs, Westell, University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) and LAN S.A.R.L.
On February 2009, three home networking organizations that promoted previously incompatible technologies (CEPCA, HomePNA and UPA), announced that they had agreed to work with Homegrid Forum to promote G.hn as the single next-generation standard for wired home networking, and to work to ensure coexistence with existing products in the market.
DS2 has announced that its upcoming DSS9960 chipset will be simultaneously interoperable with both the UPA specification and the G.hn/G.9960 standard, ensuring a smooth transition path to existing customers that are deploying UPA technology today and will continue to do so during the next years.
IEEE P1901
IEEE P1901 has been working on creating a specification for Broadband Powerline since 2005. DS2 has been an active member of P1901 since its inception, and has been one of the most active contributors to the effort. Although ITU G.hn is poised to be the dominant standard for home-networking applications, P1901 is today the only powerline standards effort that includes Broadband Access and Utility Applications over powerlines as part of its scope, which means that it has the potential to play an important role in those industries.
Since October 2007, the P1901 group has been debating a proposal that included two incompatible PHY and MAC specifications, one based on OFDM technology and another based on Wavelet technology. P1901 products based on one of the PHY/MAC specifications would not interoperate with P1901 products based on the other. DS2 vocally opposed this approach because we firmly believed that having two completely different PHY and MAC specifications is incompatible with the main goal of any standard: ensuring interoperability. We also believed that a 2-PHY/2-MAC approach would confuse the industry, mislead customers' expectations and would decrease effective competition in the marketplace, ultimately hurting consumers. Not surprisingly, the original P1901 2-PHY/2-MAC approach failed to get a successful confirmation vote (which requires 75% approval) in three different opportunities in July 2008, September 2008 and November 2008. Industry experts described IEEE P1901 situation as a "two-year deadlock".
In December 2008, a few days after ITU-T had adopted the G.hn standard, P1901 met again in Kyoto, Japan. Given that the group had made limited progress for several months, DS2 and other P1901 members submitted a proposal to add a third PHY/MAC option to the P1901, based on the G.hn standard then recently adopted. This proposal was accepted by the group, and the confirmation vote passed with broad support. P1901 has a "baseline text" now, which is the starting point for a "drafting" process that may take several years. The baseline includes now three incompatible PHY layers (which means that interoperability is not guaranteed), but at least one of them is interoperable with G.hn (which means that silicon vendors that implement the G.hn standard can decide to add support for the "G.hn-compatible" P1901 option with little extra effort).
Does that mean that we now have two competing standards (ITU and IEEE) for the same application? We think this is not the case. The fact that P1901 has now multiple incompatible PHY and MAC versions means that P1901 may not be a good fit for the consumer and service provider markets, where full interoperability is key to ensure successful technology adoption. Most members of P1901 decided early on (since October 2007) that full interoperability was not one of their design requirements, so it's unlikely that this decision will be changed now.
What about other markets and applications? Are there applications where a standard with three incompatible varieties could be useful?. Although this is still open for discussion, some members of the industry say that there are some niche markets and vertical applications where multi-vendor interoperability is not a key requirements. The argument is that the "multiple PHY/MAC" issue could be less of a problem for those niche markets where a single buyer can mandate which "flavor" of the standard to deploy and where multi-vendor interoperability is not required. In any case, unless IEEE P1901 addresses the interoperability issue, its applicability will be limited to those vertically-integrated markets.
It's a common misconception to think that some of the powerline products available in the market today are already compliant with the IEEE P1901. The fact is that the P1901 baseline includes mandatory features (such as the Inter-PHY Protocol, or IPP) that are not implemented in any product in the market today.
DS2 is committed to keeping its active contribution to the IEEE P1901 specification and to ensure that P1901 is aligned as much as possible with the ITU-T G.hn/G.9960 standard to ensure that silicon vendors have options to easily implement both standards once P1901 is published. This will guarantee that companies that deploy P1901 in vertically-integrated application can also benefit from the high volume and low cost of G.hn-compliant products.
Conclusion
Millions of UPA-compliant products are shipping each year, providing today the best combination of performance and features in the powerline networking industry for home networking, BPL and Smart Grid applications.In the long term, G.hn will become the single worldwide standard for wired home networking, including the Telco, PC and CE industries. DS2 is a strong supporter of G.hn and a founding member of HomeGrid Forum, the organization set up to promote G.hn. DS2 has announced plans to support G.hn in its upcoming DSS9960 chipset, which will provide dual-mode (UPA/G.hn) compatibility.
DS2 is also an active member of IEEE P1901. The baseline for P1901 currently includes three incompatible PHY and MAC options. Products based on one of the PHY/MAC options will not be interoperable with products based on any of the other two, although one of the PHY/MAC options will be interoperable with G.hn. Although most markets (such as Telco, PC and CE) require full interoperability as a fundamental requirement, IEEE P1901 may play an important role in vertically-integrated applications where full interoperability is not required. DS2 plans to support the G.hn-compatible version of P1901 once the standard is approved.
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